Review by Booklist Review
Schuller asserts that a major obstacle to Black women's participation in feminist politics and ideas is the lack of consideration of what white feminism does. From the earliest American feminists who actively suppressed the voices of women of color to our current time line, the author argues that the term "feminism" has lost much of its meaning, which also obscures the issues at stake. White women centering themselves is nothing new. Harriet Beecher Stowe evangelized white characters in her books as saviors to the "simple" Black characters. Until the 1970s, many prominent white feminists argued that women of color were unfit mothers while white mothers needed to reproduce more to increase the "quality" of children. After a thorough discussion of the history of women of color within the LGBTQ+ movement in the 1970s on, the author concludes with a dissection of Sheryl Sandberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Readers who are not well-versed in feminist theory may find themselves stumbling throughout some parts of this text. Nonetheless, this is a timely and essential piece that should find a wide audience in both public and academic libraries.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this passionate and persuasive survey of fault lines within the feminist movement, Schuller (The Biopolitics of Feeling), a professor of women's studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, excoriates the "individualist, status quo--driven paradigm" of mainstream feminism and calls for a true intersectionality that approaches the fight for gender equality "in tandem with the fights for racial, economic, sexual, and disability justice." Schuller's enlightening method is to pair highly critical presentations of influential white feminists with profiles of lesser-known Black, Indigenous, Latina, and trans activists who were addressing the same issues through a different lens. For example, the racist rhetoric of women's suffrage movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton is contrasted with poet and abolitionist Frances E.W. Harper's critique of white women for "consistently choosing sex over race," and the eugenic underpinnings of Margaret Sanger's birth control activism are juxtaposed with Dorothy Ferebee's concept of reproductive health access as part of a broader vision of care for Black Americans. Other notable pairings include Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg and Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and anti-trans feminist Janice Raymond and transgender theorist Sandy Stone. Schuller's lucid and accessible analysis of her subjects' lives and careers reveals that long before the concept of intersectionality was formally articulated, there were feminists fighting for it. The result is an essential reckoning with the shortcomings of mainstream feminism. Agent: Ed Maxwell, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Schuller (women's, gender, and sexuality studies, Rutgers Univ.; The Biopolitics of Feeling) juxtaposes white feminism (as it has been practiced in the United States since the 19th century) with the intersectional feminism originating from women of color. She writes that white feminists have historically focused solely on gender and been willing to sacrifice marginalized women if they deem it politically expedient, often making gains at the expense of women of color. Schuller's counterhistory highlights activists of color including Zitkala-Sa, Pauli Murray, and Sandy Stone. Notably, she discusses Stone's trans activism and the coalition-building that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has practiced in Congress. Schuller makes the case that women of color have always faced multiple oppressions and she argues that concerns of gender discrimination cannot be divorced from discrimination of the basis of race, class, or disability. She offers the examples of Betty Friedan and Sheryl Sandberg to demonstrate that feminism's work is not achieved when one white woman attains parity with other white men. Schuller concludes that feminism, as practiced by women of color, is a movement for social, economic, sexual, and political justice, and white feminism must recede. VERDICT Schuller's highly recommended feminist counterhistory is inspiring, and her arguments persuasive. She excels in letting the voices and lived experiences of women of color, trans women, and otherwise marginalized women come to the fore.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A professor of women's and gender studies faults feminism's focus on White women like Margaret Sanger and Betty Friedan and its neglect of activists from marginalized groups. Schuller melds history and gender theory in a jeremiad against "white feminism," which attracts "people of all sexes, races, sexualities, and class backgrounds, though straight, white, middle-class women have been its primary architects." In a 200-year "counterhistory of feminism," the author argues fiercely that White, capitalist feminists have furthered their own aims while harming minorities or slighting their contributions. The remedy doesn't lie in practices such as "liberals' favorite elixirs: awareness, diversity, equity, and inclusion." As Schuller notes, "inclusivity within capitalism is a fool's errand. Its core problem is that it presents capitalism as the deliverer of equality, when capitalism is actually a chief engine of social harm." The solution consists of an intersectional fight against "racism, sexism, and capitalism" led by those mainstream people feminism has thrown under a bus, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, poor, LGBTQ+, and other Americans. In each chapter, Schuller compares the misguided efforts of a prominent White feminist with the more enlightened work of a marginalized activist. She begins by contrasting Elizabeth Cady Stanton's opposition to the 15th Amendment with the vision of the poet Frances E.W. Harper, who "called out white women for consistently choosing sex over race." Schuller ends by comparing Sheryl Sandberg's capitalist "leaning in" with the "squadding up" of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ran as a Democratic Socialist. Each woman in the book has made vital contributions, but some pairings come across as strained efforts to retrofit their subjects' views to conform to 21st-century academic ideals. For example, Schuller describes the writers Harriet Jacobs and Zitkala-Sa as "intersectional feminists" more than a century before that term came into wide use. This book may have high appeal for readers who share the author's anti-capitalist sentiments; the unpersuaded are likely to remain so. A hit-and-miss broadside against two centuries of missteps by mainstream feminists. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
